"Ain't you got a bit o' red carpet and an awning for the front steps, Mops? And why don't Odo sport his order at dinner? Can't see the use, myself, in having an order if you don't sport it for royalty. Must put your best leg first. Buck up a bit, old gal, else her Royal 'Ighness will think you haven't been used to it. Anyhow, you must tell Parkins to be damn careful how he decants that '63."
In the presence of Mrs. Fitz, however, the demeanour of my relation by marriage was not unlike that of a linesman standing at attention on a field day. His deportment was so fearfully correct in every detail; his attire so extraordinarily nice—he discarded gay waistcoats and brilliant neckties as being hardly "the thing"—his hair was groomed so marvellously, and he was so overpoweringly polite that it was a source of wonder how the young fellow contrived to maintain the standard he had prescribed for himself.
It was a period of anxiety, yet it was not without its interest. In a very short time Mrs. Arbuthnot had divined the raison d'être of the four men in the park, but this did nothing to impair her sense of hospitality. Fitz did not favour us with much of his company except in the evening. During the day his energies were absorbed with the arrangements for the rebuilding of the Grange, and, as I gathered, with further provisions for the safety of his wife. All the same, limited as was the time at his disposal, it was our privilege to watch him sustain the domestic character.
Whatever the incongruity of their fortunes, it was clear that Fitz and his wife had a genuine devotion for one another. And in spite of their apartness and the idea they conveyed of living entirely to themselves without reference to the lives of humbler mortals, each seemed to possess a quality worthy to inspire it. In a measure I was privileged to share their confidence during the time they stayed under our roof; and it was characteristic of them both that at heart they had a rather charming and childlike frankness. Each of them revealed unexpected qualities.
I think I am entitled to say that I never shared the hostility they seemed to arouse in others. All his life long Fitz, as far as I had known him, had been condemned to play the part of the black sheep. Partly it may have been due to his habit of refusing to go with the tide; of his declared hatred of any kind of a majority. He had always been a law unto himself, and had given a very free rein to his personality. To me he had ever stood revealed as one capable of anything; of the greatest good or of the greatest evil; and to behold him now in the domestic circle, in close affinity with the magnetic being in whom the whole of his life was centred, was to find him endowed with a charm and a fascination which had no place in the nature of the Nevil Fitzwaren that was seen by the eyes of the world.
To me there was something beautiful and also a little pathetic in the relationship which seemed to exist between these two diverse souls. Their implicit faith in the rightness of each other, their sense of adequacy, was a very rare thing. So many of the ignoble things of life, questions of material expediency, of shallow prejudice, of partial judgment, they seemed to have ruled out altogether. And this could not have been otherwise if one reflected that a veritable kingdom of this world was the price that had been paid for this true fellowship.
My previous encounters with Mrs. Fitz had been of a somewhat trying nature. But on the domestic hearth she was much less formidable. The impetuous arrogance which had proved so disconcerting to everybody was not so much in evidence. Her charm seemed to become rarefied as it grew more humane. The childlike directness of her point of view began to emerge more and more and to enhance her fascination; indeed, her way of looking at things became a perpetual delight to such sophisticated minds as ours.
Her total inability to take us seriously was quite piquant. Our England and all that was in it amused her vastly. She would compare it to an enchanted land in one of Perrault's fairy-tales. But our code of life, our manners and customs, our ideals, our mechanical contrivances and, above all, our solemnity concerning them, never failed to appeal to her sense of humour.
It was my especial pleasure to converse with her after dinner. I should not say that the art of conversation was her strong point, and it was not until she had been a week in our midst that I was able to come to anything approaching close quarters with her. But it was worth making the effort to get past the barrier that was unconsciously erected by her air of disillusion, of patient, plaintive tolerance.
There was a quaint definiteness about her ideas. Touching all questions that had real significance her thinking seemed to have been done for her generations ago. All that lay outside the life of the emotions was to her the wearisome iteration of a constitutional practice, a necessary but somewhat painful part of the order of things.